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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
So close to greatness, June 30, 2010
This review is from: Blood Song (Kindle Edition)
I found this a difficult review to write because there were many things I really loved about this book. Deciding between 3 or 4 was tough. In the end I've gone with three, because while the bones are great the flesh just isn't there.
Celia Graves is a bodyguard in a world where magic parallels technology and the history of magic is taught in college courses. The book gets off to an achingly slow start but quickly gathers steam. If you can get past the first chapter it really does get better. By the second chapter Celia is demonstrating her mixed competence as a bodyguard and getting set up to die. Instead of an untimely demise, she's turned into an "abomination."
Celia spends the majority of the book bouncing from one hostile encounter to the next. People want to kill her because she looks like a vampire, or because she's involved in international political markets, or because she just really frosts every female out there.
Blood Song suffers from a plot that at times is nearly incoherent. There's just too much that the authors tried to cram in - on occasion with a crowbar. It's nice that they don't feel it necessary to force feed you the plot, but very little is actually explained and everything is a mystery. Even by the end, there remain more loose ends then woven threads. You never do discover how the bad guys killed her best friend or even if they did for certain. There are some romantic threads that are picked up but nothing really happens with them. There's an ex-fiance that Celia can't move out of will-she-or-won't-she.
There are too many characters with loosely defined traits and it makes it things a confusing muddle to try and remember whose who. Why do we care about her defense attorney who is in all of six paragraphs or so and has no crucial role in the plot?
Celia herself is an example of the issues that plague the novel. She's all over the place. She's a woman who worries about being too girly and feminine, yet she drives a Miata. She doesn't have one major childhood trauma. She has a bucketful: the queen of pathetic mothers, a murdered sister, an implied sexual assault, and a dead-beat dad - just to get started. She's a bodyguard, but couldn't care less about probing into the lives around her. She knows almost nothing about her own supposed best friends. It makes her seem more then a little self-centered, but her actions don't support this. Celia goes out of her way to save people she's just met like the kid at the pharmacy. She has no idea how to fight, even though it's how she makes her living.
The last could be an author/editor snafu. Bad guys are able to draw delicate weapons from beneath coats even though they are in the midst of a brawl. A home gas line that has been broken seconds before is somehow in danger of exploding - even worse the broken line is outdoors where the gas would dissipate faster then it could escape. These are easily explained by authorial mistakes or a lack of research.
On the other hand the authors do some things exceptionally well. The human condition side of the story is very well done and much of the supporting cast shines (when you know which person has that name). There is a lot going on in the book and something for everyone to love. Once the story gets going it rolls right along to the climactic finish. Sadly, the ending is rushed. It's like the word count had hit its max and any and all connecting fibers of the story needed to be cut to save space.
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49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From a very avid reader who almost never writes a review!, June 9, 2010
Only one time earlier this year (out of hundreds of books) have I ever been impressed enough to write a review......Until this book. This is my second review ever, and it was because I was so surprised and impressed with it. I won't go into detail about the book but I will tell everyone that this book is one of my new favorites. I would very much put this book / story / style next to ones like Mercy Thompson, Sookie, Illona Andrews's series, Friday Night Bites, Jane Yellowrock, and Shelly Laurenston. It was a perfect style, possible romance, fast paced, and felt like a light and easy read but at the same time intense with many twists and changes. It tugged just right. I have already put the next book on my pre-order and have added this author to my list. P.S. The ending does not leave you hanging but it does give you a peek into the next one:)!
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Promising pulp goes off track near the end., July 2, 2010
This book made me think of early Anita Blake at first, maybe better. The focus was squarely on the monster hunting. There was sexual tension, but it wasn't a big part of the book. When our heroine gets turned into an abomination, partly vampire and partly human, sure she gets super strength, but she also gets many weaknesses of a vampire, at least to some degree. In general her transformation causes far more problems than it gives her the power to solve. Maybe there are occasionally too many details about what people are wearing, how they smell, and what the decor is like, but all in all it was decent brain candy, if not at the level of Jim Butcher or Kelley Armstrong.
In the second half, things started to fall apart a bit. A major plot thread was resolved unceremoniously "off screen" without our heroine being involved. Then I got to the part that makes me fear for future books in the series. There's really no way to talk about this without spoilers for events near the very end of the book, so stop reading now if you aren't ok with that.
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It turns out that our heroine was not a regular human before she was an abomination: she is actually a siren, also. Subconsciously, she has been using her power to call men to do her will. Ultimately, this is how she saves herself- not with her super strength or her habit of carrying a virtual arsenal. By calling on all the men she knows who can help. If it were just a psychic connection to her friends it could be ignored if the ones whom she called happened to be male, but since the power is sexually specific it makes it impossible to ignore the sexist implications of her still needing the men in spite of everything. On the other hand, she inadvertantly antagonizes women unless they are lesbians or infertile for one reason or another. First of all, do we really need another series that suggests women can't really be friends? This book started off well in that regard; our heroine even feels sorry for her best friend's mother because she has never had a close female friend. But then it turns out that she can only have female firiends if they are biologically immune. And what's the logic behind the immunity? Her power doesn't seem to affect lesbians, because although her best friend was one, her lover couldn't stand her. So if she doesn't have power over lesbians, are they immune because they aren't attracted to the men she does have power over? But post-menopausal and otherwise infertile heterosexual women can still be attracted to, love or lust after those men, so why aren't they affected? Something very weird happens to the sexual politics of this book once the siren twist is revealed, and I don't think I'm comfortable with it.
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